There is a small number of Catholics who are called sedevacantists. My best friend Julian is among them and so is angry Tom. If you do not know who they are, they are a small group of people who are scandalized by what the last few Popes have done and have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for a true Pope to do what they have done, so therefore they are not Popes somehow. They reject the papacies of all the popes after Pope Pius XII and believe that there has been no Pope since his death in 1958. I used to be very sympathetic to their cause, but now, not so much. I have come to think many of them are pious fools, many are scientistical heathens, some of them are perverts, and many of them are schismatics. I truly believe my friend Julian is a good Catholic, but some others, not so much. I do not trust the priests among them. They look at the church and are scandalized and say, this cannot be the Church, so they leave and start their own Church. Sometimes among them there are sex scandals, but this is not unique to them. They are independent so there is no oversight. The first large organization of sedevacantists was founded by a layman who got himself ordained by a schismatic Bishop and started a sect who turned out to become a drug addict and a pederast. Some claim he eventually started wearing white and declared himself the true pope. He is dead now. His followers kicked him out and claim to be clean now. But with such beginnings. Can a rotten acorn produce a healthy oak tree? Well our souls are conceived in sin yet with God's grace we can become saints. It is similar to the Legionnaires of Christ who are among the mainstream Church, but sedevacantists claim to be the pure true Church which if they were correct should be immune to such scandals if they were blessed by God? The faithful remnant.
Is everyone a slave to sexual sin? Does everyone else other than me have sexual fantasies and watch porn and commit such acts of impurity in act, even people claiming to be pious Catholics? I do think the world is wicked and enslaved to lust, but when I see people I think they are good and chaste, especially people who claim to be religious. Perhaps it is because I went crazy, but I do not suffer from such problems. Like when I was a child before such perversions were introduced to me, so I am now. I have no interest in them. I do not think of such things and the idea of them does not please me. Maybe a kiss from a devout wife but I am really a prude if such a word fits and does not imply deviancy. I used to commit such sins as a young man, but when I converted I had to give such things up and I did and it was hard at first, but now I am clean. Perhaps because of my mental illness, but I think it is because of God's grace and the help of His Mother and the Saints.
I am thinking often about the idea that sin scars the body as well as the soul. the thought that the reason little children are more beautiful than older people is not because they are smaller, but because they are more innocent. And when people get older they become ugly because of their sins which perverts the body as well as the soul. Over time a sinful person starts to look vile and repulsive, even if they were born beautiful, and a holy man starts to look beautiful even if they were born ugly. They have a glow about them and look like the angels in Fra Angelica's paintings. That is my theory as to why most women are ugly without makeup after their short spring of youth, even before they take up the stress of motherhood and raising children. I imagine as the world gets more and more wicked, the faces of people will get more and more ugly, until even the children will look like little devils, even the little ones, because now they are getting corrupted even in their youth. I know me myself was not corrupted until probably the sixth grade, and especially middle school. From communion with the other children who were advancing into puberty, and from watching television and going to school, with things like sex ed, which was tame back then, they did not even speak of sodomy. And seeing pornography around the house. But is this dangerous to think? Probably. How can one know by looks alone? One can be easily mistaken. It is just a thought. But some people just look holier than other people. I think of my Gemma and the Little Flower who looked like angels, but they were young, and Pope Pius X who looked like a saint even as an old man on his deathbed. Can you really see grace in the faces of God's holy men, and can one really see sin in the faces of the wicked? Is it possible for one to be like Christina the Astonishing who could see and smell sin and would flee from it, even to the point of flying away like a bird into the fresh air?
I don't know but I do not think most people are beautiful. Everyone is ugly. I do not think I look ugly myself, for some reason when I see my own face in the mirror I think I look good, even though I am middle aged now. But so many other people just look ugly to me. It is a strange delusion, similar to my first attack when I thought I could see sin in the faces of the people who came in to get coffee and I freaked out. But anyway I do not like make up. Hiding behind a glaze. Can one really be called a lover if one hides from them behind a mask?
Perhaps I am getting ill again, thinking such things. Who knows what is real and how the world works. Who can one trust? Is there a Padre Pio alive today who can read souls? There should be one among the traditional Catholics, should there not? But there is only Archbishop Lefebvre and he is long since dead. He is also among those who I believe looked holy so I consider it possible knowing about his life that he was a good man and not the leader of a schismatic false revolution.
So I am no longer sympathetic to sedevacantism. I believe Francis is the real Pope, but I believe he is a bad one. Things fall apart. There are others who believe that Pope Benedict who is retired and living in the Vatican is still the Pope even though he denies it and resigned seven years ago. Most prominent among those is Ann Barnhardt. I hold the sedevacantists in higher regard than the Benevacantists as they are jokingly called.
And in my judgment of people's looks, I am sad to say that a prominent Bishop who is in the news looks like an evil man to me. He just looks wicked, even though he is supposed to be the good guy. One can not judge by looks, and I hope he is an angel. But it is just a strange delusion I have, or perhaps a gift. When I look at his face I think badly of him. I was in the court house with my Father who is a lawyer and I was looking at all the people there and I thought all of them were ugly, except for one woman, who looked like a normal person, but not beautiful.
Animals are more beautiful than people. But not all animals, but the ones I normally see. People have the potential to be more beautiful than animals unless they are defiled by grievous sins. But in the fallen world we live in today, it is better to look at the animals. The animals, the moon, the clouds, the sun, the stars. And then the ugly people. In a world so devastatingly beautiful, us people are an ugly pox, not because of our nature, but because of our sin. The sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Because of our sin.
So I am feeling delusional lately, thinking such things.
